Oracle Blog

Thursday Feb 05, 2015

Oracle
Coherence 12c leads the market with its in-memory data grid. Entries can be
reliably processed in place, queried, and aggregated. Coherence scales applications
to support growth, offloads and protects shared services in addition to
delivering information in real time. Coherence is part of the Cloud Application
Foundation along with WebLogic Server and Tuxedo.

Coherence
has introduced a range of new features to help customers deliver next
generation applications that scale to handle mobile, social, and "internet
of things" demands. HotCache makes database updates available in real-time
to applications. It detects and reflects database changes in cache in real time
while leveraging existing technologies i.e. GoldenGate and TopLink Grid in
order to broaden the applicability and usability of Coherence. Meanwhile, Managed
Coherence Servers quickens time-to-market and simplifies operations. These
servers combine WebLogic and Coherence infrastructure while introducing the
Grid Archive (GAR).

This
session reviews these features and takes a look at our most recent features and
coming roadmap. Coherence provides new options for integration, including
support for JCache (JSR-107), and new monitoring capabilities. We will also
look at exciting innovative features like Recoverable Caching, Federated
Caching, Multitenancy, and support for the Oracle Cloud. For other CAF sessions at OpenWorld you may want to review, visit http://bit.ly/oow14cafsessions.

Friday Jan 30, 2015

This one is for
those of you who haven’t developed that app [iphone or otherwise] which defies
the laws of physics and lets us be at two sessions at once at OpenWorld. The good folks at
Oracle University recorded many OpenWorld sessions and some of the most
prominent Cloud Application Foundation sessions are now available here. I wanted to
kick it off with the WebLogic Server Strategy and Roadmap session hosted by Will
Lyons, Head of WebLogic Product Management. So sit back, relax, and enjoy your
weekend watching the show!

Will talks about how
to leverage WebLogic today and in the future, sharing WebLogic’s current
features as well as illustrating the product’s future capabilities in the
impending 2015 release of WebLogic 12.1.3. Oracle
is investing in several strategic areas for WebLogic and Java Cloud Service (JCS)
to ensure complete flexibility for our customers with their cloud and
on-premises applications. The investment areas include improved performance,
scalability, and availability for applications deployed on WebLogic and JCS,
cloud-level management to simplify provisioning of WebLogic environments,
multitenancy, ease of deployment flexibility, improved developer environment,
and more.

In the most recent WebLogic version
12.1.3, released in July 2014, new features include improved Oracle Fusion
Middleware product support, mobile client application development features, and
performance and availability innovations from the beginning of the development
lifecycle.

For instance, the OTN Free Developer
license makes WebLogic easier to get started and free for development on
developer desktops, and includes refined language to broaden applicability and
usage. With traditional Oracle licensing, developers could develop on their
desktop for free but once applications were put in production, licensing fees
would apply on the desktop where applications were developed. Now, the entire
development lifecycle is free. Developer zip updates also update zip
distributions with Patch Set updates for automatic bug fixes and common
developer issues.

Other improvements include high
availability and performance via simplified disaster recovery with 3x better
output due to transactional updates without TLOG transaction writes, and
Exalogic optimizations such as JMS replicated stores. Improvements in cloud
scale management also see dynamic clusters that eliminate the need to create
clustered configuration and managed server configurations to those clusters (ie
machines, listen ports, etc.), allowing for enhanced JMS support and maximum
scaling. In doing this, there is seamless upgrade, application compatibility,
and interoperability with previous WebLogic versions, as well as flexibility
and choice for development and runtime. Developers can now take advantage of
all the latest Java SE technology, such as JDK 8 improved memory management
features.

Perhaps one of the most exciting
developments in WebLogic 12.1.3 is the release of Oracle Java Cloud Service,
which allows customers to deploy full-featured WebLogic instances anywhere with
full ability to move applications on-premise to the cloud and vice versa. Java
Cloud Service includes a self-service provisioning interface which makes it
easier to provision clusters and domains. There is also an option of exposing
the entire surface area of the WebLogic server to do whatever you need to
replicate on-premise environments to the Oracle cloud and vice-versa, with full
compatibility.

WebLogic 12.2.1 Roadmap — What is
Coming?

WebLogic 12.2.1, to be released in
2015, will see even further advancements including multitenancy, built-in
elasticity, a REST-based management infrastructure, disaster recovery
improvements, Java EE 7 support, and more seamless Exalogic integration. A
truly differentiating factor is WebLogic’s multitenancy capabilities - in other
words, its ability to run applications supporting multiple tenants within the
same server cluster, domain, or instance.

A brand new innovation in WebLogic
is a new configuration construct called a partition, which represents a ‘slice’
of a domain that can span all the servers running in your domain. Each
partition can be dedicated to tenants, providing appropriate levels of
end-to-end isolation of resources among partitions so you can deploy resources
individually though they share a domain. Examples include memory and CPU isolation
at the JVM level, or separate work managers. This concept is highly significant
as it dramatically decreases density of deployments on WebLogic server, and
allows customers to get far better utilization of their infrastructure. It is
also a great use for consolidation--ie departmental applications that maintain
isolation between multiple applications but want the same domain.

This multitenancy provides strategic
end-to-end value that is completely unique to Oracle, as it will be implemented
not just at the application server level but will be integrated into the entire
Cloud Application Foundation stack. Elastic clusters in WebLogic 12.2.1 will
also define configurable rules for cluster scaling that will help customers
define actions like scaling a cluster up or down, scheduling defined by
workloads or time of day, or driving other configuration changes.

Finally, there are also improvements
to the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software 12c, on which WebLogic Server is
supported and optimized for. In 2015, Exalogic will allow for capabilities to build
private clouds that run on the same IaaS and PaaS provisioning technology in
Java Cloud Service, as well as similar interfaces.

Well, I really cant cover 45 minutes
worth of content in one blog, although I tried. So go ahead and take a listen
at Will’s sessions that is hosted at http://bit.ly/oow14cafsessions. Next week, we will highlight the Coherence
Roadmap and Strategy session for the in-memory data grid buffs amongst you.

Friday Nov 14, 2014

Providing traditional RASP
[Reliability, Availability, Scalability, and Performance] support is necessary but not
enough for cloud success. According to about 80 percent of survey respondents, achieving
unified, standards-based interoperability among public and private clouds—as
well as traditional datacenters—is critical.This includes the ability to use the same standards and code base to
deploy applications on either public or private clouds without the cost and
delay of rewriting or retesting those applications.

CONCERNS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR
MIGRATING EXISTING APPLICATIONS TO CLOUD

With all the enthusiasm around
public and private clouds, respondents are fully aware of areas of caution
about migrating both applications and data to the cloud. The most important, cited by 78
percent for private cloud users and 76 percent for public cloud users, is
migrating high-performance applications—or those with stringent security
requirements—to either type of cloud. Other concerns include both public and private
cloud not being able to support mission-critical applications, legal and
regulatory requirements, security and isolation from other customers, vendor
viability, vendor lock-in, integration cost and delays, and lack of reliable
usage metrics.

Thursday May 08, 2014

Reliance Commercial Finance provides loans for real estate, commercial and private vehicles,
construction equipment, and infrastructure to more than 70,000
customers, including businesses and individuals. The company has an
operational presence that spans 66 locations in India, and it is one of
the fasting growing nonbanking financial companies in the country.

With more than 2,000 users accessing the company’s core applications every day, the legacy IT
infrastructure was struggling to process more than 6,000 daily
transactions, especially during peak periods, such as the last five days
of each month. It was also time-consuming and costly to manage and
track customer-loan applications and approvals across multiple systems.
The legacy system increased customer churn and time to market.

To address these issues, the company implemented Oracle WebLogic Suite and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
to ensure high-performance, high availability, and scalability for its
core applications. It also enabled seamless integration with Oracle
Exadata Database Machine. These implementations accelerated loan
transaction speed by 30% and increased IT staff members’ productivity by
70%. In addition, the financial institution improved its
competitiveness by accelerating the customer loan approval process by 3x
and slashing new application deployments from eight weeks to one day,
thereby increasing customer satisfaction. Complete details of Reliance Commercial Finance's use case can be found here.

Wednesday Mar 26, 2014

Therap Services is a web-based service
organization that provides an integrated solution for documentation,
reporting and communication needs of agencies providing support to
people with developmental disabilities. It is a niche segment in the health sector. Its products and services are
used by people in over 48 states in the US and by governments
in at least five US states. Therap was using JBoss application server and managing it was becoming difficult. JBoss messaging proved difficult as well with out of band
situations that it couldn't handle. Therap opted for WebLogic as their primary application delivery platform. Now Oracle Enterprise Manager [OEM] and JVM Diagnostics [JVMD] provide
deep monitoring and visibility into the application stack. These tools have uncovered many bottlenecks in the Therap application that otherwise wouldn't have been found and fixed. "The
benefits and results of Oracle solutions are huge", says Mojahedul Hoque Abul Hasanat (Masum), CTO, Therap Services. The performance relative to JBoss are order of magnitude higher, he says. Watch this video and find out more details.

Thursday Jan 23, 2014

The reasons are many. Firstly, WebLogic is Oracle’s strategic application server. Consolidating on the
latest release provides better runtime capabilities and increased efficiency. WebLogic has one of the industry's best [if not the best] backward compatibility. Because thousands of customers have done it and they have been successful and in the process the kinks in the process have been ironed out......

Packed with customer success stories, this e-book provides insights, proof
points, and best practices for you to drive the transition. Learn
from many other WebLogic and Oracle iAS customers why it makes sense to consolidate on
the latest WebLogic release, whether you are operating a traditional data
center or transforming it to the cloud.

Tuesday Jan 14, 2014

NCH is the leading global provider of industrial maintenance solutions. The company is focused on industrial cleaning and maintenance, water treatment and remediation, plumbing, pet care, and specialty industrial supplies. NCH relies on Oracle Fusion Middleware and WebLogic provides process and
application integration with superior scalability. Enterprise Manager
provides integrated management. Predominantly an E-Business workshop user, initially NCH was slightly overwhelmed about using Fusion Middleware. However, they found that WebLogic is pretty easy to install and configure. "Basically, we have one
managed server and two admin servers, and it hardly took us time to
troubleshoot our issues", says Rameshwar Balanagu, Fusion Architect at NCH. Watch this video to learn more.

Wednesday Oct 30, 2013

Here is another great YouTube video by our product manager
Monica Riccelli. She talks about installers now being standardized in Oracle
for greater consistency -- no more WebLogic native installers. Also, JDK is no
longer a part of the WebLogic install. The
various installers she discusses include OUI, ZIP, OEPE, Coherence and more.
Monica then takes us through a step by step install process.

After the install process is complete the
video takes us through the configuration wizard. The ZIP installer is then discussed
and its effectiveness, such as it being the smallest downloadable option, easy, and
very popular with our customers and limitations (such as for development only
and not to be used in production) highlighted. Monica then takes us through the
configuration wizard, its usage, and when to use WLST scripts. The video then
discusses NodeManager and its usage and discusses how to reconfigure a WebLogic
domain on upgrade – through our GUI tools or through command line interface.
Lastly, it highlights Opatch – a patch application tool used by our customers
and standardized across all Oracle products. Really detailed video. Check it
out!

Monday Oct 14, 2013

With tight budgets organizations
throughout the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) see the appeal of the open
source model. Open source software (OSS) includes operating systems,
applications, and programs in which the source code is published and made
available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute that
code without paying royalties or fees. Open source “products” typically evolve
through community cooperation among individual programmers as well as very
large companies. An open source license permits anybody in the community to
study, change and distribute the software for free and for any purpose.

At first glance it might seem
that DoD organizations can avoid buying commercial software products simply by
starting with open source software and developing their own applications. As this
white paper shows, total cost of ownership (TCO) for open source software often
exceeds that of commercial software. While minimizing capital expenses by
acquiring “free” open source software is appealing, the up-front cost of any
software endeavor represents only a small fraction of the total outlay over the
lifecycle of ownership and usage. And while cost effectiveness is important, it
must be carefully weighed against mission-effectiveness.

This paper seeks to answer two
questions:

1. What are the tangible and
intangible costs that the government should bear under an open source licensing
model?

2. What are the tradeoffs and
risks associated with open source licensing models in relation to commercially
available software?

Download this whitepaper today
to ensure you are considering the various cost drivers of owning and operating
an application environment.

Monday Sep 16, 2013

Therap Services, LLC. is a web-based service
organization that provides an integrated solution for documentation, reporting
and communication needs of agencies providing support to people with
developmental disabilities. It offers an easy and efficient alternative to the
immense amount of paper work that is done manually by the care providers.
Therap’s software suite is relevant to all the different kinds of service
organizations that support and care for people with intellectual and
developmental disabilities. Therap is used in over 1,000 agencies, in small
agencies serving as few as one individual to multi-state providers serving
thousands of individuals. The modules can be categorized under Individual
Support, Staff Support and Billing and Attendance Support. Therap uses Oracle
Database and had been using JBoss as the application server for their mission
critical application. As Therap has grown, they have experienced several
performance issues with JBoss – specifically problems with JBoss
Messaging. As Therap continues to expand their business, they felt the
need for a more robust solution for their core business application.
Additionally, Therap needed a more advanced monitoring solution for both
internal and external transactions on multiple layers: application,
database, application server. They chose Oracle WebLogic Server for three main
reasons: 1) Extremely high confidence level in the Oracle Product
Management team expertise, 2) Access to a better support system with product
integration and best practices, and 3) Oracle’s proven reliability
history. Come join Therap Services CTO Masum at OpenWorld to hear
about how Therap leverages Oracle WebLogic Server with Oracle Enterprise
Manager to really take their applications to the next level. In addition, while
at OpenWorld don’t miss other Cloud Application Foundation Innovators. You can join the session
whether you are an OpenWorld attendee or not.

Friday Aug 30, 2013

Oracle WebLogic Active GridLink for RAC is the
market-leading mid-tier integration solution leveraging additional Oracle RAC
advancements. Oracle and NEC have jointly invested on verifying and testing the
Active GridLink for RAC solution which provides a high-availability, scalability and high performance solution for
helping customer building mission critical applications. In addition, WebLogic
Server is the only application server which has been fully integrated and
certified with Oracle Database without losing any capabilities in Java EE
implementation with respect to security, transaction, connection pooling , management, and
more.

NEC has constructed high availability systems with WebLogic
Server and Oracle Real Application Cluster. It investigated advantages and
features of the GridLink data source focusing on high availability and
flexibility that GridLink data source achieves in integrating with Oracle RAC. The
purpose of these tests is to get high serviceability by diverting system
integration know-how of JDBC data source already storing, in addition to using
these functions. The following are functions which the GridLink data sources were tested for.

1.Runtime
Connection Load Balancing(RCLB)

2.Web
Session Affinity

3.Fast
Connection Failover (FCF)

4.Performance
Improvement by Dynamic Changes in RAC
Topology

Join us in this OpenWorld session as we discuss the detailed
Active GridLink capabilities and the testing results obtained by NEC. We will
also discuss the new functionality introduced with Oracle Database 12c.

Tuesday Feb 12, 2013

Do you need to optimize your
middleware performance and manageability? Are you looking to consolidate your
application infrastructure to a modern shared-services or cloud infrastructure?
To answer these questions and more we hosted a live webcast with Mike Lehmann,
Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle iAS
recently.

The live webcast was a major success
thanks to all of you who attended and participated. It generated great
enthusiasm and many questions most of which we answered during the live
session. However, by popular demand, we have enclosed a link below to the all
of the questions and answers from the webcast.

Listen to Mike discuss iAS to
WebLogic upgrade paths, tools, and best practices for various data center
configurations and highlight the benefits of upgrading to WebLogic and
describes some of its rich capabilities including:

Lightweight, Modern Development Experience

High Density, High Performance Virtualization

Complete Visibility, Diagnosibility and Management of
WebLogic and iAS

Friday Feb 08, 2013

Listen to Dmitri Tyles, Senior Director of Development at Deltek -- a global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for project-oriented businesses -- discuss their reasons for upgrading to WebLogic 12c and their experience with the upgrade process. Deltek has about 14,000-plus customers and 1.8 million users Dmitri Tyles, Senior Director of Development at Deltek -- a global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for project-oriented businesses -- discuss their reasons for upgrading to WebLogic 12c and their experience with the upgrade process. Deltek has about 14,000-plus customers and 1.8 million users around the world in 80 countries. Needless to say the stakes are high. They were able to upgrade "Costpoint" with 1,500 applications to WebLogic 12c in about six weeks. They did run into a couple defects along the way which were reported to Oracle and fixes received pretty quickly. The rest of the upgrade was pretty smooth, Dmitri says. He goes on to talk about a particular feature which was really key for Deltek -- the support Oracle RAC. WebLogic always supported Oracle RAC, Dmitri claims, but the previous solution required a fair amount of manual maintenance from a WebLogic administrator. So for example, if a RAC administrator on a database side would add another node to the cluster, a WebLogic administrator would have to go in and manually update the same settings on WebLogic Server and add this node and register it. With the Active GridLink solution that Oracle has included in WebLogic, this is no longer necessary. So WebLogic is completely aware of all the changes happening to the RAC and, as such, all this ongoing maintenance is completely eliminated.